The beginning of the unending

Ever noticed how everything in this world has a beginning and an end? There is a constant flow of new beginnings and endings (apparent endings). Humans, animals. insects, plants all are born and die. Even rocks are deposited, cemented, heated, squeezed, uplifted and eventually eroded back into particles. Over long periods even rivers, mountains, continents, oceans, planets, galaxies, all have a beginning and an end. The cycle of life appears to be unending, but what was the beginning of the unending? That might sound like a really weird question, but it’s quite simple and is a very profound question to consider.

The beginning of the unending

Here is use the term “overall life” to identify the complete spectrum of life that we see in the world, as a single thing.

Everything we see in our world is constantly in a state of flux, all things with a beginning and an end. The life in the universe doesn’t stop because a tree or a human dies. In fact, the process of birth and death seems to feed the overall life of the universe. The material of a dead tree becomes food for the soil that will make the newer trees strong. The prior interactions of a now dead person with other people who are still alive, has enriched their lives and added to the overall state of life. Artistic creations of a now dead person still enrich the lives of the living.

An individual birth or death is inconsequential to it”overall life”, but each one is an important element of it.

When you step back and look at life overall, it’s defined by this flux of births and deaths, beginnings and endings. That’s what overall life is. An individual birth or death is inconsequential to it, but each one is an important element of it.

Because everything in life has a beginning and end, but overall life keeps going in any case, we can say that overall life is unending.

But here’s the big question – “if everything in life has a beginning and ending, where did the first beginning come from?”.

Where did the first beginning come from?

Now we’re fully stuck in a spiritual dilemma. If everything has a beginning and and end, what was the first thing that ever had a beginning, why did it happen and what existed when it happened?

Hmm.

We can avoid the question if we say that overall life is eternal, that is without a beginning or end. Now we have one thing that doesn’t have a beginning or end, even thought every single thing we see does. That seems a little illogical.

My take

We have two possibilities here;

Overall life, with all its beginnings and endings, actually never started and will never finish – it is eternal – always was and always will be, or,

An eternal power has created what we see as our world as a temporary experiment

As we’ve seen in many of my other posts, and the writings of so many people, that it’s impossible to get away from needing something eternal (something that has always been) to be behind everything. I find it hard to believe that the world we live in could be that eternal thing because it’s so fragile and it does appear that we (humans at least) are capable of destroying it. I believe that the eternal thing behind everything would have to be pure and lacking aggression for it to be eternal.

If this world is a temporary experiment made by the eternal thing that is behind everything, and this eternal thing is pure and lacks aggression, then we are made by this same thing. This is our true source and, fundamentally, we must be part of its purity and without aggression in truth. We might appear to be able to hate and be aggressive, but that must be just part of the experiment. This can’t be fundamentally our true nature.

The highest achievement we can make in this world is to realise that our true nature is pure and without aggression, that is, to be peaceful, loving and joyful. If we can claim that now and live that, even in this difficult world, we might unlock everything and properly understand the eternal thing that is the beginning of the unending, and realise that we are part of that sublime eternal thing.